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This D-Day, I thought it worth scrolling back through history, to one of the more memorable speeches about this historic day.

It was President Reagan's 1984 speech, delivered on the 40th anniversary of the invasion that turned the tide of the war.

Not insignificantly, it was penned in large part by Peggy Noonan, whose talent for the well-turned phrase is legendary, and well-earned. (She once toiled here at CBS News, and wrote about her time here in her first book "What I Saw At The Revolution.")

The speech is a minor masterpiece that recalls the "theater of the mind" of radio, where Noonan first worked:

The Rangers looked up and saw the enemy soldiers - the edge of the cliffs shooting down at them with machine guns and throwing grenades. And the American Rangers began to climb. They shot rope ladders over the face of these cliffs and began to pull themselves up. When one Ranger fell, another would take his place. When one rope was cut, a Ranger would grab another and begin his climb again. They climbed, shot back, and held their footing. Soon, one by one, the Rangers pulled themselves over the top, and in seizing the firm land at the top of these cliffs, they began to seize back the continent of Europe. Two hundred and twenty-five came here. After two days of fighting, only 90 could still bear arms.

Behind me is a memorial that symbolizes the Ranger daggers that were thrust into the top of these cliffs. And before me are the men who put them there. These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc. These are the men who took the cliffs. These are the champions who helped free a continent. These are the heroes who helped end a war.

Click right here to read the whole thing and feel the goose bumps again.

Ward Sloane is a CBS News producer based in Washington.

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From the day he took the oath of office, on March 20, 1981, until the day he left Washington to return to California, President Ronald Reagan kept a daily diary. The diaries are a fascinating account of one of the most eventful periods in modern American history. They’ll be published on Tuesday, May 22 by HarperCollins.

The fact is that many Americans and -- not surprisingly to some of you reading this blog -- many members of the mainstream press believed that Ronald Reagan was aloof and disconnected from the events that marked his presidency. Historian Douglas Brinkley, who edited the diaries at the invitation of Nancy Reagan, says they show Reagan to be exactly the opposite.

In an interview with CBS White House Correspondent Bill Plante, Brinkley says, “I don’t think that you can call the man who wrote these diaries a dunce. He’s somebody is very much on top of what his policy is, who has reflection, who has a handling on details…” Brinkley says his writing does not reveal a man as intellectual as Thomas Jefferson or Theodore Roosevelt, yet, he is “able to keep his game together, he knows that the wolves are always circling him but they never outfox him.”

Anyone who reads the diaries will understand, as Brinkley says, that the defining moment of his presidency came on March 30, 1981, when a crazed young man tried to assassinate him. It is clear from reading the diaries that Reagan believed that he was saved from death in order to do great things, and he perceived these things to be arms control and restraining and remaking the federal government...

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The Republican candidates for president are meeting in Los Angeles for their first debate tonight -- 18 months before the election.

But this might be a good opportunity to tune in, not tune out.

Click the monitor to find out why.

Last week, it was the Democrats in South Carolina; this week, it's the Republicans in California.

The 10 GOP contenders for president -- yes, there are 10 of them -- will be debating tonight at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley. Reagan, like Hamlet's father, will be lurking nearby -- casting a considerable shadow.

Lately, the library has been in the news for other reasons: a small treasure trove of diaries kept by the late president are finally being published. They offer a glimpse into his thinking, and his relationships with cabinet members (not always cordial) and family members(much like his relationships with cabinet members.)

Yesterday, the Washington Post offered some tantalizing tidbits, culled from a Vanity Fair article:

The earnest entries are marked by a spare writing style in which Reagan reduced complicated matters to their essence. In 1982, when he accepted Haig's resignation from the Cabinet and Haig said they had had disagreements over foreign policy, Reagan wrote: "Actually the only disagreement was over whether I made policy or the Sec. of State did."

A 1981 entry on Cuban leader Fidel Castro said: "Intelligence reports say he Castro is very worried about me. I'm very worried that we can't come up with something to justify his worrying."

The former actor was well aware of his public image, and tweaked the Fourth Estate after he deliberately reversed the order of the opening sentences of his welcome at the 1984 Olympics: "The press having a copy of the lines as written are gleefully tagging me with senility & inability to learn my lines."

When his former chief of staff, Donald Regan, disclosed that Nancy Reagan had consulted an astrologer for advice on her husband's travel schedule, the president remained in denial:

"The press have a new one thanks to Don Regan's book. We make decisions on the basis of going to Astrologers. The media are behaving like kids with a new toy -- never mind that there is no truth to it."

As the 10 GOP candidates line up for their moment in the spotlight tonight, most would like to inherit the Reagan mantle. Or at least be deemed "Reaganesque." If anyone still wonders what exactly that means, I suspect those diaries explain it better than anyone else could.

"All great change in America begins at the dinner table." - Ronald Reagan

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